Keynote:
The Art and Science of Student Success: Using Design Thinking and Advanced Analytics to Help Students Learn Well and Finish Strong

Presenter: Dr. Mark David Milliron, Civitas Learning

Using examples from other sectors that have brought together the best of design thinking and advanced analytics to achieve their diverse missions—from business to athletics to healthcare—we’ll catalyze a conversation about how we leverage this approach in education. We’ll then dive into examples of similar work in education as schools, colleges, and universities innovate to help more students learn well and successfully navigate their educational journeys.

Keynote:
The College Experience: Moving the Needle on Student Success

Presenters: John Streitmatter, Leadership Research Institution and Dr. Tonjua Williams, St. Petersburg College

Using an interactive dialogue, John Streitmatter and Dr. Tonjua Williams will explore how the college’s recent efforts have shifted the focus of the entire Leadership team, managed to overcome longstanding challenges to increase student success, and built leadership capability at the same time.

Data Aren’t Enough: To Move the Needle on Student Success, Clarify the Path

Presenter: Davis Jenkins

E-advising systems and data analytics can provide powerful tools for monitoring student progress, but they are by themselves not sufficient to move the needle on student success because the paths through college are confusing and programs are often not well aligned with student end goals. This session will examine the efforts of a growing number of colleges and universities that are improving student outcomes by redesigning academic programs and support services to create more clearly structured and educationally coherent program pathways to student end goals, with on-ramps to help students choose and successfully enter a program of study and integrated progress monitoring, feedback and support to speed program completion. The session will present research evidence in support of this “guided pathways” approach. This session will also present a tool developed by CCRC researchers for colleges to assess their readiness to adopt e-advising technology.

The Reality of Real-time: The “What, Why, and How” of Accessing and Using Real-time Data from Your Enterprise Systems

Presenter: Brian Parish, CEO and Founder, IData Inc.

What do we mean by real-time data? When do we need it (or not)? If we really want it, how do we get it? Once we get it, how do people trust it and understand it enough to use it? This session will discuss lessons learned from a wide range of reporting and system integration projects. The session will include a discussion of data access design decisions, a survey of the technical architecture options for accessing real-time data from various higher education ERP systems, and lessons in the importance of applied data governance.

Evaluation of Black Male Achievers Program

Presenters: Lei Wang and Equan Burrows

This session presents the results of the evaluation of the Black Male Achievers Program (BMA), showing how the program successfully increased course success rates, improved fall-to-spring and fall-to-fall retention rates, and increased graduation rates. The overall purpose of the evaluation was to determine the educational and personal impact of the BMA program on its participants. The BMA program at Tallahassee Community College (TCC) is designed to empower and educate its black male students on the importance of the successful completion of their post-secondary education through the practices of academic, social and occupational excellence.

Empowering Front-line Staff to Improve the Student College Experience Using ‘Real-time’ Data

This session will describe St. Petersburg College’s initial implementation of culture changing initiatives, the evolution of the College Experience, the development of the Pulse BI system, and the empowerment of staff in extracting and using analytical data in regularly scheduled, focused conversations about student success improvement. Attendees will have a better understanding of how front-line staff use “real-time” data to improve the student experience, the role of the SPC Pulse Business Intelligence System, and how the Wednesday morning webinars are used to improve student success.

Using Analytics To Power and Scale Student Success Initiatives

Presenters: Rob Robinson, Kurt Ewen, and Paige Borden

As students pursue their education, they tell their stories in the data they create and interact with along the way. That information, captured in higher education databases, is an untapped resource that has the power to transform students’ journeys by improving their learning, academic outcomes, and overall likelihood of success. This session will discuss how diverse higher education institutions are beginning to implement a “data, science, people” approach to delivering the right information, to the right people, at the right time, and in the right way in order to measurably improve and power up student success initiatives.

Using Co-Curricular Transcripts to Impact Student Development: The Stories of Two Schools

Presenters: L.K. Williams, J. Marshall and Ellen Wehrman

This session will provide the stories of two schools that used co-curricular transcript programs to enhance the holistic growth of their students. Both schools sought to support student growth in targeted co-curricular areas. Both used a Web-based tool to collect, validate, and report student activities. Both used the tool to 1) create co-curricular transcripts to support each student’s future educational and professional aspirations, and 2) create institution-level reporting to determine the impact of the program.

Cultivating a Culture of Inquiry and Evidence

Presenter: Laurie Heacock

A key principle of Achieving the Dream is the use of evidence to improve programs and services. In this session, participants will learn what a culture of evidence means and the ingredients for cultivating a culture of evidence, how to assess your data maturity and how to define lead measures and lag measures so you use data not just to track results but to influence results. A framework will be shared on how to use data to increase student success with examples obtained from colleges in the Achieving the Dream Network.

Adding the Non-Cognitive Dimension to Your Student Success Agenda

Presenters: Rigo Rincones and Pauline Anderson

Have you wondered how you can take your student success agenda to the next level and go beyond the typical student demographics characteristics or observable traits? If so, bring your team and learn specific, data-informed strategies to address your students’ non-observable factors – student attitudes, mindsets, and perspectives – that can either drive or inhibit your student success agenda.

Changing the Conversation about Faculty Evaluation

Presenters: Heather Roberson, Martha Campbell and Sabrina Crawford

This session will describe the faculty driven evaluation redesign process from developing shared values that would engage ownership of the process, support deep self-reflection, and promote collaborative discussions with Deans. Showcasing the strengths of a talented faculty body, the data collected and analyzed ties directly to professional development and improved teaching and learning. How we developed the e-portfolio system to capture the evidence supporting this process will be shared, along with the process workflow.

The Evolution of the College Experience at St. Petersburg College

This workshop will provide a detailed look at the evolution of the College Experience since its inception in 2012, and how ‘real-time’ data has been used to continually improve the five components; Early Alerts and Student Coaching; Expanded Out-of-Class Support; Integrated Career and Academic Advising; My Learning Plan; and Enhanced New Student Orientation. Attendees will have better understanding of the initial principles behind the College Experience and how it has evolved over the last few years, how the college evaluates the effectiveness of each component using ‘real-time’ data to make decisions, and how the five components are seamlessly integrated in order to improve student success.

Presenters: Jesse Coraggio and Patrick Rinard

Triangulating Co-Factors to Student Success

Presenter: Peter Usinger

Using the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire and results from its Withdrawal Survey, Polk State College applies the analysis of multi-year data to track student success in courses and across program hurdles. The results provide surprising insights into the interaction between student motivation, learning strategies, and perceived obstacles across various disciplines and delivery methods. The findings concerning academic challenges and personal/environmental factors further help expanding student support options. In combination with course evaluations and student grades, the data aggregate to a good triangulation tool to further facilitate improvements in curricular design, advising, and student success. Additional focus areas are students’ self-directedness, critical thinking skills, and collaborative problem solving to better prepare students for the workplace, and to assist institutions with accreditation needs, predictive modeling, and advancing faculty development.

Celebrating 10-Years of Client Success!

Smart-College-Choices

Presenter: Scott Parke

The Florida College System’s Smart-College-Choices web portal transparently delivers data on employment and earnings by college and program of study to empower students, parents, policymakers and the public with information about how outcomes differ based on a student’s choice of major and across local labor markets. A demonstration of the existing Smart-College-Choices web portal will be provided and information shared about grant funded portal expansion plans. Context will be furnished about the evolving policy environment that emphasizes the importance of being accountable for and transparent about workforce and continuing education outcomes.

Presenters: Sally Search and Shanna Autry

Participants will learn how TCC has integrated Starfish Early Alert and Starfish Connect and is using it for recording class attendance, financial aid reporting, progress reports with early alerts and kudos, and referrals to services, The system also allows advisors to create academic plans and success plans and monitor and track students’ progress. Presenters will share implementation strategies, training needs, successes and challenges of an institution-wide retention solution, and outcomes data.

Planning, Budgeting, and Transparency

Presenter: Jamelle Conner

Learn how one college develops and manages a budget that is directly tied to their strategic plan, built on a process of shared governance and transparency, and managed through empowerment and data tools, such as Business Intelligence.

What Attendees are Saying

What I really like about this conference is it's focused on actionable data---how to get the right information to the right folks at the right time."

- Conference Attendee

I'm excited to say I've never seen anything that in-depth. To actually have, at one time, so many people sit down and focus on the overall idea of how to implement and change the overall scope of student success."